Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Earth-349: General Jumbo

Disclaimer #1 This story was inspired by a story in Superman #349, but is notlimited by that story or any other.Disclaimer #2 This story features characters based on characters owned by DCComics, Inc., Marvel Comics and others. This story was written forentertainment only and is not intended to infringe or disparage thosecopyrights, even though they should have expired decades ago and freed thosecharacters from the dead hand of perpetual corporate ownership.Disclaimer #3 This story was inspired in part by the short story “Boobs” bySuzy McKee Charnas, but not so much that anybody’s likely to call it aninfringement.Disclaimer #4 This story is not recommended for persons under 18 or the easilyoffended, especially those who are uncomfortable with a feminist analysis ofprecocious breast development in jailbait.Note 1: General Jumbo will be a pretty obscure character to USAn readers, butBritons should recognize him. More information can be found athttp://www.internationalhero.co.uk/j/jumbo.htmNote 2: This story is dedicated to “Melons” and all the other girls who havehad to endure the sort of cruelty Amanda suffers from in this story.

Mummy always says I’ll be glad one day to be “well-endowed”, and maybeI will, but if so, couldn’t the silly great things have waited until “one day”to come along, instead of popping in unannounced during the summer I turnedtwelve?“One day”, according to all of Mummy’s friends, the boys will beworshipping me on account of them, but so far it’s been nothing but teasing andrude jokes and hands grabbing at them.I swear, if one of the boys would just look me in the eye and tell methat my knockers were driving him crazy and could I please take off my jumperand let him have a feel, I might just say yes. I could see doing that forNigel Barr or Bert Gregory. They’re halfway human most of the time and theyused to act like they were my friends (although I haven’t got the least wishfor a “boyfriend”). But not for that beastly Colin Gillie. He’s the one whoreally made my life miserable over the things. He was the one who startedcalling me “Jubblies” instead of Johnson, and when he got four of the best forit, he changed it to “Jumbo”, and pretended it was just because I was so tall.I don’t think the adults were fooled, but it gave them an excuse to pretendthey were fooled, and most of the time that seems to be all they want.And it was Colin Gillie who got that pack of boys chasing me downMulberry Lane that day in April, when I really thought something bad was goingto happen.I was walking home from school. It’d been a long day and I was goodand ready to be home and watch a little tele. I was adjusting my bra, tryingone more time to find a way to make it actually comfortable, when I heardColin’s nasty voice behind me.“Look at that, even she can’t keep her hands off them!”And it was his nasty voice, not the one he used for talking to boys or adultsor other human beings, but the one that was for talking about my tits and thecreature unlucky enough to be standing behind them.I looked behind and there were Colin and Nigel and Bert and a couple ofother boys I recognized from the comprehensive, though I couldn’t put names tothem.I shouldn’t have run. I should have walked up real close and showed myteeth and called Colin a nice ripe bad name. If I’d done that, they might haveleft me alone. Instead, I started to run, and when I did Nigel yelled “Gether!” and they were off after me.If it had only been Colin by himself, or Nigel, I expect he wouldn’thave gone past copping a feel, but with the lot of them together, each oneafraid to back down before the others did, it might have gotten a lot worse.In the books I’d been reading lately, boys did terrible things to girls attimes like this. They didn’t go into detail, those books, but that made theterrible things all the more terrifying.In the books, it was bad girls who had things happen to them, but Iwasn’t so stupid as to think that there were really rules about who bad thingshappened to in real life.Besides, any girl in those books who had big tits was always a bad one.I ran, and the boys all came baying after me, and the more I ran andthey yelled, the more frightened I became. And it would have to be the part ofMulberry Lane where the creek ran along one side and there was a stand of treesalong the other, and no houses for a couple of hundred metres, and there wasnobody else around.I rounded a turn and the boys were still after me. I was taller thanall of them except Bert, and I probably could have just outrun them, but I wasscared and I wanted help, wanted adults or better yet a policeman nearby. Iwanted to be amongst people, not here in this frightening place where there wasnothing between the boys and me but the law of the jungle. Yes, I was gettingall out of proportion here, but that’s the way I was thinking right then.Up ahead was a garden wall, and I ran right up to it and grabbed its top andhauled myself up. I balanced on top of the wall, trying to get a purchase withmy feet, and felt myself starting to slide over the other side. I rememberthinking that with my buttercakes on the far side of the wall, I had gravity onmy side. A hand grabbed my foot and I kicked back, connecting with somebody’sface, and served him right.Somebody’s hand went up under my skirt. I don’t think he did it onpurpose, I think he was just grabbing for me any which way, but whoever he wasgot hold of the waistband of my panties and I screamed and made a crazyscramble that put me over the wall in a tumble, scratched and bruised andpanting. I sat up and there was a tank pointing its cannon right in my face.It was small enough that you could cover it with a hat, but somehow itdidn’t look like a toy. Looking down that pen-sized barrel, I felt as thoughit could shoot a small but very real hole in me.There were more tanks, I now saw, and behind them squads of tiny soldiers scrambling over miniature terrain, forming up to face me. I was in a garden, back of a house, and it was all little ridges and hills and tiny trees and houses, all made to the scale of the soldiers, who were maybe five centimetres tall. With all those little guns pointed up at me, I felt like one of the monsters in the films they showed at the Palace on Saturdays, except forthe “bombs and shells have no effect” part.I stood up slowly, and the guns all tracked on me. The soldiers aimed theirrifles (I learned later that only their bayonets were functional, but I didn’tknow that then), and the tanks swung their turrets, all aimed at my chest. Iheld very still.“Here, girl, leave off the toys and come play with us!”I looked over my shoulder, and there was Colin grinning over the wall at me.I stood there, frozen between a danger I didn’t really understand and a dangerthat just seemed crazy, and then I heard a buzzing noise like a giant wasp, anda tiny little fighter jet flew between Colin and me and shot something at himthat exploded like a squib in his face. Colin fell backward, squawking, out ofsight.I stared at the wall for a moment and then remembered the army behind me. Iwas turning to face them again when I heard a sharp voice.“Who are you and what are you doing in my garden?”On the far side of the tanks and soldiers, a tall thin man with white hair washolding a small metal box with a long antenna coming out of it. He was pushingbuttons on the box, and turning a little dial, and the army was moving awayfrom me. The man looked rather familiar, though I couldn’t place him.“Those aren’t toys, you know. Their weapons are real. You could have beenbadly hurt.”The man wasn’t very cross, he was obviously more concerned for me than anythingelse, but he also seemed like a very authoritative person, like a teacher oreven a clergyman. I’d never dropped a curtsey to anyone before without havingbeen reminded ahead of time to do it, but I did for him."Amanda Johnson, Sir. I’m sorry for intruding, but there were these boys….”He nodded, and then he bowed.“Yes. I saw that one nasty fellow, and you were obviously afraid of him, so Isaw him off. Christopher Pike, Miss Johnson.”“You’re Professor Pike? You’re the one who invented Robot Annie!”I expected him to smile and look proud at that, since Robot Annie is sofamous, but instead he just looked sad, and then he said, “I worked on thatproject, yes, but I’m not a member of that group anymore.”He sort of shook himself, and then he smiled at me.“Well, let’s get you inside, where you can telephone home and have acup of tea to settle your nerves.”That sounded lovely to me, so I went to walk with him into the house,and that’s when I found out that the boy who’d been yanking at my panties hadruined the waistband, because they fell down around my ankles right in front ofProfessor Pike himself. Worse yet, there was no way I could just pull them upand they’d stay up, so I was forced to step out of them and stuff them in thepocket of my blazer. The Professor was ever so kind, though, and didn’t say aword.It was the most remarkable cup of tea I’d ever had. In the Professor’sparlour, more little creatures like the little army bustled about. A teddybear, three feet high, brought sugar and milk to the table, and a littlefootman walked across the tabletop to scoop up sugar for me. The teapot rolledover to my cup on little wheels and poured itself without spilling a drop.The Professor told me that he was living in Dinchester to have a quietplace to work on robots for the military. They were going to be used forthings like sneaking cameras behind enemy lines, or bombs that could flythemselves to their targets. For fun, he’d built his first prototypes in theform of toys, but he’d given them the kind of motors and sensors that the realmilitary robots would have, and had even armed some of them. The planes firedmissiles that exploded like squibs. That was what he’d used on Colin. Thetanks had the barrels and firing mechanisms of small pistols (“twenty-twos”, hecalled them), and while they normally just fired blanks, he’d loaded them withreal bullets to do some target practice today.He explained that the government was eager to have weapons that couldkeep Britain a world power, even though we had no atomic weapons, and alsowanted to encourage science, even though we had no space program. He made ajoke, saying, “And if we’ve got any superheroes stashed in a bunker somewhere,I’m not aware of it!”We went out into his garden after that, and he showed me what hislittle army could do. He let me handle the control box, and told me I wasa “natural”, which made me feel terribly proud. I told him about how the boysharassed me on account of my tits (only I said “bosom”), and he was verysympathetic.“When I was your age, I developed the foulest breath on Earth. Notooth powder or mouthwash could control it. I learned much later that it wasan infection, and it took sulfa to get rid of it, but at the time it was justmisery for me. The kids all called me ’Stinky’ and that name came close tobreaking my heart.“And then one day a boy called me ‘Stinky’ one time too many and I justsnapped. I grabbed him by the shoulders and shoved him up against the wall,good and hard, and I put my face up close to his so he could get a real facefulof my breath, and I yelled, ‘That’s Mister Stinky to you!’ And somehow, thatwas the right thing to say, because after that they did call me Mr. Stinky, andit didn’t seem so bad. I had my Mum knit me a sweater with a big picture of askunk on the front, and I had more friends and less trouble.”I could only shake my head at this story, finding it hard to believethat I could ever make a decent name out of “Jumbo”.The Professor had a caller then, and I was ready to say goodbye andhead for home, but he invited me to spend some more time with his little army,and left me alone in the garden. I set the soldiers to drilling in formationand the tanks to patrolling along the garden wall, and started getting familiarwith the planes. It really was amazing how much you could get the littlethings to do, with just one little control box with only a few buttons and acouple of dials.It felt good, having those little machines under my command. It feltlike nothing I’d ever done. The sense of power, of control, of having a kindof talent for running things, was simply marvelous.For so long, I’d felt as though I were helpless, pinned down by adultsand their rules, by boys and their mad hands, by girls and their envy, but atleast here, in command of the Professor’s little army, I was in charge.I was making the planes fly in formation and then break off one by one,while part of my mind was working out how you could set up little tabletopbattlefields and have people hire them like pinball machines, when I heard acry of pain from the house.I ran back to the French doors and saw two men raising the Professorroughly from the floor, while a third stood over him with a pistol in hishand. There was blood coming from the Professor’s mouth.“I’ll say again,” the man with the gun said, “is there anything you’dlike to take with you? We really do want you to comfortable in your new home.”I should have been too frightened to do anything, except maybe run theway I had from those boys. But right at that moment, I didn’t feel like aschoolgirl – I felt like a general. So I twisted dials and punched buttons asfast as I could, and the Professor’s little army went marching through theFrench doors with guns blazing.I saw later that I really shouldn’t have fired so many of the guns.The three men were all wounded, and one of them nearly died, and it was onlyluck that the Professor wasn’t also shot. Still, I did manage to stop themfrom abducting him.My little army stood guard over the men while I telephoned the police,a little plane circling above them as they cringed together and heldhandkerchiefs to their wounds.I got a nice letter from the police and my picture in the paper.Everyone at school made a fuss over me, and so did my family, but I assumedthat would be the end of it. At tea a few days later, though, the Professorsurprised me. He told me that he wanted me to come by every day and drill hisarmy, and even take some of them out with me to march and roll and fly aroundtown. He said it would serve as a test of his robots’ powers, and also let meget practice at using them. He said that I had a real future as an operator oflittle machines like his, and that there would be lots of jobs calling for thatkind of work in the future, both in business and in the military.The idea of being part of a new industry, and maybe a new kind of war,was kind of interesting, but I’ll admit that what really sounded good wasgetting to have my own personal army to follow me around.I have a permit from the police to take the little army out in public. The tanks and planes only fire squibs now (even an adult wouldn’t be allowed toload the tanks with bullets), but those can be quite useful in distracting andconfusing a person. I’ve already helped the police capture a man who wasrobbing a shop, and disarmed a bomb someone left in the Mayor’s office.Things are different at school, as you might imagine. Nobody tries tobully a girl who commands an army. They call me General Jumbo now, and youknow, I do like the name better, just as Professor Pike said. I even have acap with gold braid on the bill, and a military tunic.Double-breasted, of course.Contact the author at dr_psycho1960@hotmail.com

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Life is full of surprises. This blog (and its predecessor, misterniceguy1960) was originally created for me to advertise for a lover. Later, it served as a brag-diary about my sexual exploits. Now, I am committed to a monogamous relationship with my wife. Surprise.